Usenetnow FAQs News archive

There is currently a networking issue causing a complete loss of service
to the EU server. We have rerouted traffic to the US server for now,
however this will take some time to propagate. To connect immediately
please connect to the US server (usnews.usenetnow.net) directly until we
have restored traffic to the EU server.

We are investigating an issue with slow speeds during authentication and
article retrieval. While we continue to investigate, customers will
see sporadic issues. Switching to the EU server may help by giving more
consistent results however US users may see slower speeds due to
location. We will update this post with additional details as time goes
on.

We have experienced an issue with articles around
300 days and over. Retrieval of articles of this age range will give a
variety of errors in your newsreader such as articles being corrupt,
articles being missing or simply cause your newsreader to hang as it
requests the article from the server. If the article is in fact
available slow speeds will be evident.

Once we fix the issue that caused the errors, we will begin
rebuilding the spoolset. We should begin doing this throughout the
night tonight and into the day tomorrow. (Friday June 25th)

All Usenetnow customers can now use up to 50 connections! Customers on slower internet connections should not need this many, however we urge all customers to find the right amount of connections to use to achieve there speeds.

There is currently a power/network outage going on at the EU server.
Because of this, connections will fail. The datacenter staff over
there are working towards a fix so it should be back up as soon as
possible. We apologize for this, and will be adding features to our
network to minimize this if it should happen again.

UPDATE- All looks to have returned to normal. There was a completed network outage which caused the issue.

This issue should now be resolved. A disk that was full was not
showing up in monitors. This disk was causing the server software to
act up to say the least. Some users who saw slow speeds may also see
there speeds return back to normal. If you are still seeing issues,
please write to support and let us know. Thank you for your patience.

Users are seeing connection errors, we are looking into it, we will have this fixed ASAP. The EU server is working and you may use it in the meantime.

UPDATE- Midnight Eastern time- We restarted a machine
that was causing the connection issues and that solved the problem for
a couple of hours, however it seems they are cropping up again.
Needless to say we will need to play around with it some more to see
why it is failing. In the meantime, you may use the EU server (eunews.usenetnow.net) as it remains up and available for use. We apologize for this and will have the US up and running again as soon as we can.

UPDATE- The new EU server is now live and if you connect via the EU server address, you will now be connecting to it instead of being redirected to the US server. Please let us know if you see any bugs that may crop up.

SSL is not working as of yet, should be fixed by later tomorrow, however you may connect via non-SSL for the time being, if you would like to use the new server.

Due to continuing, unexplainable speed and other issues with the EU server, we decided to redirect traffic to the US server for the time being. For those EU users who may see speed issues with this temporary move, you can increase your amount of connections up to 50 to over come this. We should have a new system in place at a different data center shortly.

We had a slight issue with the user database and lost some users who signed up or purchased from us this past Wednesday (June 10th) through late Friday night (June 13th). If your account does not work, or your most recent purchase is not showing up, please let us know so we can add these back for you manually. We apologize for this.

Also, the old server address (news.usenetnow.net) has gone away. Please begin using the new server addresses:

The previous address will be going away at some point in the future, so it
would be wise to change to one of the above addresses. In the meantime,
the previous address will begin pointing at the new EU server.

- Headers are also back! You will find we now have header retention
matching our article retention.
- We are also happy to announce that retention is increasing to a
competitive 400 days! You will notice that once you switch server
addresses retention is now around 255 days or so, this will be rising day
by day. if you use headers, please remember to reload them.
- Another exciting feature we have added is the use of a "Webreader".
This web reader will allow you to use your browser to view and reply to
text and picture groups, without the need of a separate Newsreader. There
is also a version for IPhone / Smart Phone users, so now you can take part
in Usenet discussions while on the go, or stuck in traffic (please do so
safely of course)! The links for both of these are located in your Account
Center on the left hand side. An active subscription to one of our
products is required to use the web reader, and you must complete a one
time registration before you can use it. Simply log in to the web reader
with your user name and password to get started.

- We have also added a new "Weekly Unlimited" account for users. Now you
no longer have to commit to a full month or more when all you need is a
week!

- All of our accounts also require no commitments, if you choose not to
have one! You no longer need to be tied down to a month to month
commitment. Sign up and "Pay As you Go" and use your account when the time
is right for you.

Please let us know if you have any questions, comments or concerns by sending us a message via the support function.

We had a PDU (Power Distribution Unit) failure this morning that
interrupted service for many customers. This should now be cleared up
and things are returning to normal as our DNS repropagates. We apologize for the outage.

Things did not go quite as planned, causing an outage for a better
part of last night. We apologize for the issue and are looking into
what we can do in the future to stop this type of thing from happening
again. Things should be back to normal now, please submit a support
ticket if they are not.

Rescheduled from the 9th- On January 16th beginning at 9 PM (EST) continuing until January 17th 6
AM (EST) our website may be down intermittently due to server
maintenance. This may affect your ability to submit support tickets
through our online form, browse our website, complete purchases and
view the FAQ pages. This will NOT affect the news servers as they are
a separate system.